Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
The oil spill bad guys are collecting millions in taxpayer bucks to build a new power plant in California.
— By Will Evans
Wed Aug. 4, 2010
The federal government is giving a joint venture involving oil giant BP millions of dollars in stimulus money to build a power plant on farmland near the tiny Kern County town of Tupman, even as the company faces heavy government pressure and a criminal probe into the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
BP is benefiting from a $308 million federal grant over several years for the cutting-edge power plant on cotton and alfalfa fields seven miles from the western edge of Bakersfield. More than half of the money, $175 million, is coming from stimulus funds. The rest is coming from another federal program.
The stimulus portion alone ranks as the second biggest award in California to a corporation and among the largest in the country benefiting private interests, according to data reported to the government by stimulus recipients.
The US Department of Energy announced the grant last year to Hydrogen Energy California, a joint partnership of BP and the multinational mining firm Rio Tinto, and has paid out $13.6 million so far. The money continues to flow even as the Obama administration bills BP for the massive costs of the oil spill.
"If you're trying to get money out of them, why are you giving them money?" said Tom Frantz, a local environmental advocate and part-time almond farmer who opposes the power plant. "If I was the government right now, I would not give BP $300 million to do anything."
The stimulus award highlights the disconnect that occurs when the government gives grants and contracts to companies it has fined or prosecuted. BP, for example, had been fined hundreds of millions of dollars and pleaded guilty to criminal environmental violations before the Gulf spill and before receiving stimulus money.
All eight dispersants were found to be less toxic than the dispersant-oil mixture to both test species.
82_28 wrote:I hear what you're saying justdrew. But fuck the shareholders. It's what they invested in and this is their investment. This is just the nature of the beast. Fuck the investors.
Hugo Farnsworth wrote:Off with their heads!
The top kill on the existing blown out well has me worried, rather than killing it with the relief wells. It might mean that BP is trying to salvage it for future production. Their cheapness stuns the imagination.
http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2010/07/31/feds-cant-find-oil-but-satellite-photos-show-bp-gulf-oil-spill-covering-12000-square-miles/
The federal government and media is reporting that the BP gulf oil spill has disappeared but satellite photos show a slick covering over 12,000 square miles of the Gulf.
According to John Amos over at Sky Truth all of that oil that magically disappeared isn’t going away just yet.
Yesterday’s MODIS and RADARSAT images show something we didn’t expect: slicks and sheen spanning nearly 12,000 square miles. Based on other reports, and the recent trend on satellite images indicating steady dissipation of the surface oil slick, we are optimistically assuming that nearly all of this is very thin sheen.
Speculation: winds from Bonnie obliterated most of the thin sheen throughout the area; but since then, sheen has had time to “reassemble” into observable layers that noticeably affect the sunglint on MODIS images, and the backscatter on radar, but may not look like much to folks out in the Gulf on vessels or in low-flying aircraft. That’s our theory at this point. Chime in if you have other thoughts about what we’re seeing on these images...
Things are definitely recovering/regrowing, but there is still a big mess out there and who the hell knows what is going on under the sea surface.
On the way to work this morning, local radio reported over 500 birds, turtles, etc. were recovered. Most were dead.
Some of this damage will not be able to be gauged for years.
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 177 guests